Sunday, August 28, 2005

Don Brash on Agenda this morning, being interviewed about his chauvinistic post-debate comments:

SIMON But when you said you didn’t want to interrupt Helen Clark on the basis that she was a woman. It suggested that you believe men and women to be unequal.

DON No no I did not say that. I was asked – you weren’t shouting and screaming as much as Helen Clark was in the debate was the question. I said look I don’t regard it as terribly mature for adults to shout and scream at each other in any circumstance and particularly inappropriate for men to shout and scream at women. There's too much of that going on now. Now it was a light hearted remark, it did not suggest in any way that I was reluctant to interfere, interrupt, interject against Helen Clark...

6
comments:

Maybe brash is better than I give him credit for.... maybe he has calculated tht the publics memory is pretty sort and no matter what the "pundit class" remembers the general public will just remember the last position he took - therefore flip floping is no problem.
Posted by
Genius
:
8/28/2005 09:17:00 AM

Don Brash has already speculated on whether politicians have a moral obligation to lie before elections about policies they think are right.

I don't give him credit for anything. You can see a pattern of behaviour here. Posibbly he BELIEVES his last position, and has completely repressed in his own mind his previous position.Ergo - Troops to Iraq. Asset sales. Nuclear free law 'gone by lunchtime'. Gender Equality. Logging on West Coast. The list goes on.
Posted by
Anonymous
:
8/28/2005 11:13:00 AM

brash is reminding me of the gay guy in the first Australian Big Brother (Johnny I think?) - Johnny would vote for people to leave then be the first in line to hug them when they were upset at being in the bottom three. Everyone got the impression he was really evil, from the way they edited it all, but actually he would do these things without thinking much about the consequences, then when he saw the aftermath and the hurt he would totally and utterly change his mind.

It's a character flaw for sure and to be honest i bet we all do it in our personal lives from time to time - reinvent the position we held so that we don't have to face the guilt for the hurt what we really said/did caused.

All the above said, this is however on quite a different level - Brash is running for PM, the f'ups are on policy and matters of principle, not just "i find it hard to live with X because they snore too much".
Posted by
span
:
8/28/2005 04:47:00 PM